In her star-struck biography of the First Lady, Hillary’s Choice, Gail Sheehy reported Hillary’s plea in favor of bombing Yugoslavia in 1999 as a major point in her favor. According to Sheehy’s book, Hillary convinced her reluctant husband to unleash the 78-day NATO bombing campaign against the Serbs with the argument that: “You can’t let this ethnic cleansing go on at the end of the century that has seen the Holocaust.”

This line is theatrical and totally irrelevant to the conflict in the Balkans. As a matter of fact, there was no “ethnic cleansing” going on in Kosovo at that time. It was the NATO bombing that soon led people to flee in all directions – a reaction that NATO leaders interpreted as the very “ethnic cleansing” they claimed to prevent by bombing.

The aim of this protest was to overthrow the government with violence, as the government said in a statement. The U.S. ambassador chimed in, “Political violence threatens democracy and all that Kosovo has achieved since independence.”

This violence gets little attention from the American media in part because, unlike the Ukrainian demonstrators who overthrew their democratically elected government in 2014, Kosovo’s protesters are targeting a pro-Western government that eagerly seeks membership in the European Union.

But it’s no wonder that Kosovo’s political fabric is so rent by violent confrontations. The rump state was created by a violent secessionist movement led by the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA). That guerrilla band of Albanian nationalists was covertly backed by the German secret service to weaken Serbia. Its terrorist attacks on Serbian villages and government personnel in the mid-1990s prompted a brutal military crackdown by Serbia, followed by NATO’s decisive intervention in 1999.

During the fighting the KLA drove tens of thousands of ethnic Serbs from Kosovo as part of an ethnic cleansing campaign to promote independence for the majority Albanian population. It recruited Islamist militants – including followers of Osama Bin Laden – from Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Afghanistan and other countries.

President Bill Clinton’s special envoy to the Balkans, Robert Gelbard, called the KLA “without any question, a terrorist group,” and a Council on Foreign Relations backgrounder added, “most of its activities were funded by drug running.”

None of that, however, stopped Washington from embracing the KLA’s cause against Serbia, a policy spearheaded by the liberal interventionist First Lady Hillary Clinton and Secretary of State Madeleine Albright. Without authorization from the United Nations, NATO began bombing Serbia in March 1999, killing some 500 civilians, demolishing billions of dollars’ worth of industrial plants, bridges, schools, libraries and hospitals, and even hitting the Chinese embassy. (“It should be lights out in Belgrade,” demandedNew York Times columnist Thomas Friedman. “Every power grid, water pipe, bridge, road and war-related factory has to be targeted. Like it or not, we are at war with the Serbian nation.”)

Following Serbia’s capitulation, according to Human Rights Watch, “elements of the KLA’€ engaged in “widespread and systematic burning and looting of homes belonging to Serbs, Roma, and other minorities and the destruction of Orthodox churches and monasteries. This destruction was combined with harassment and intimidation designed to force people from their homes and communities. By late-2000 more than 210,000 Serbs had fled the province . . . The desire for revenge provides a partial explanation, but there is also a clear political goal in many of these attacks: the removal from Kosovo of non-ethnic Albanians in order to better justify an independent state.”

Former KLA leaders, including its political head Hashim Thaqi, went on to dominate the new Kosovo state. A 2010 report by the Council of Europe declared that Thaqi, who was then Kosovo’s prime minister, headed a “mafia-like” group that smuggled drugs, guns and human organs on a grand scale through Eastern Europe. The report’s author accused the international community of turning a blind eye while Thaqi’s group of KLA veterans engaged in “assassinations, detentions, beatings and interrogations” to maintain power and profit from their criminal activities.

In 2014, a three-year E.U. investigation concluded that “senior officials of the former Kosovo Liberation Army” should be indicted for war crimes and crimes against humanity, including “unlawful killings, abductions, enforced disappearances, illegal detentions in camps in Kosovo and Albania, sexual violence, other forms of inhumane treatment, forced displacements of individuals from their homes and communities, and desecration and destruction of churches and other religious sites.”

Under tough pressure from the United States and E.U., Kosovo’s parliament finally agreed last summer to permit a special court to prosecute former KLA leaders for war crimes. The court will begin operating this year in The Hague.

“The sad thing is that the United States and European countries knew 10 years ago that Thaqi and his men were engaged in drug smuggling and creating a mafia state,” said one European ambassador last year. “The attitude was, ‘He’s a bastard, but he’s our bastard.'”

Though GW is generally way behind the times - as in this case - I do realize that what he eventually writes is necessary for newbies, e.g. recent millions who are realizing that Kim Kardashian, Oprah Winfrey, etc. don't really matter and that the MSM lies.

I like to hope that GW will, one day, write an article about 9/11 in which he at least takes up A & E for Truth facts about WTC7, if not the whole shebang which I daresay 30% of the population is aware of by now.

I have no axe to grind for the Donald, but he has gotten 9/11 out of the closet at least relative to the mysterious "28 pages".

If I have missed GW's conversion from the official bin Laden conspiracy theory, then I apologize.

In any case I think it largely true that if and when the official myth gets recognized as such by say 60% of the population, then there will be a revolt against the real perps, including the Clintons who have at least covered up the inside job, whether or not actually carried out by elements of Israeli and Saudi special forces, with such as Cheney and Rumsfeld complicit, not to forget Larry Silverstein.

Considering that this "New Pearl Harbor" was the pretext for permanent war on "terror" (and has enabled Hillary's wars) and destroying seven countries in five years (Wesley-Clark), exposure of this fact to even the densest and most stubborn of sheeples must surely rock the Titanic ship of State. So come on George, get the masses up to speed, if you've caught up some way yourself.

So as of now, it appears that Clinton's best punch has managed to knock Sanders back from having 45% of voter-based delegates going into Super Tuesday, to 40%. Not exactly a knockout.....and the map now tilts away from the South.

I would call this a horse race, with the money in Sanders' favor. Turnout will tell, and 'events'. Upcoming Flint, Michigan debate looks to be an event for sure.

HRC is a psychopath, just like Obama and Bush. Even so she won't be POTUS because the US establishment core needs a non-establishment candidate in the White House to offer up the no longer useful part of the establishment as a sacrifice to mollify the people when the next economic crisis hits. But if they are not smart enought and let HRC into the White House, it would be a good idea for Russia and China to wipe the US out before she takes oath. Even one day of that creep as POTUS is too risky.

The only candidates currently left in the fray that Russia and China should deem as posing no threat to them are Trump and Sanders. If anyone else becomes POTUS, the US should be turned into a radiation wasteland.

While it used to be possible to decide to vote on the basis of the "lesser of evils," the overall situation has degenerated towards choosing the "lesser of insanities."

The ruling classes have become increasingly psychotic psychopaths, while the basic issues in the next American election seem to be the degree to which the majority of voters shall able to choose the "lesser of insanities."

Marco, I agree that one could interpret those events as apects of an overall Zionist plan. However, that kind of plan does NOT adapt to the existence of weapons of mass destruction becoming trillions of times more powerful than ever before in human history.

Old-fashioned plans based upon triumphant applications of the methods of organized crime continue to develop weapons of mass destruction in ways which are INSANE.

I almost didn't read this article -despite my love of all George washigton columns and his blog - BECAUSE - he is simply retating the obvious. I have heard and read this so many times over the years-it's getting old. But such articles are essential. So many idiotic Democrats who voted for that psychopathic, murderous piece of shit. We have to keep getting the word out -so maybe more and more immoral, lazy, pathetic sheeple who support her -wil finally pull their heads out of their asses and see the Truth.

Albright and co gave Milosevic at Ramboullet an offer he could not accept, it was designed that way. Yugoslavia had to accept unrestricted access of NATO to its territory and immunity to its members. That effectively is an occupation. Nobody would have accepted that and Albright knew that. Even Kissinger said that the 'deal' was wrong. Milosevic refused so the conflict began. The war was already planned the year before. But NATO thought they would need 48 hours but in fact they needed 78 days and only won after they started targeting civilian objects. Apart from power stations, factories and bridges also hospitals, commuter trains, fleeing refugees (of all ethnicity), open markets and random houses in random villages were targeted. A rumor goes that Milosovec gave in after he was threatened with carpet bombing of Belgrade. Milosevic of course conveniently 'died' in the Hague. As the article says, the real ethnic cleansing started after Yugoslavia redrew its troops from Kosovo. NATO as in KFOR was supposed to protect these people.

But now this: Part of the current government of Serbia was also part of the government of Milosevic. They recently signed into law that NATO can have unrestricted access to Serbia and its members will get immunity. That in my opinion is treason. Like all these people died for nothing. That happened after John McCain gave a visit to Belgrade btw.

Kosovo is a failed state. Hacim Thaci was recently reelected as president of this failed state. Unemployment is around 40% and people want to leave in droves. The KLA apart from killing and ethnic cleansing also stands accussed of organ trading, that is of killing Serbs and moderate Albanians and selling their organs. But the price must have been worth it as would Albright say. Kosovo is home to the US biggest base called Bondsteel. Why such a big base for such a small country? Because Kosovo is filled with minerals in its soil.

Now, I might be accused of hypocrisy for saying that. I myself am not and have never claimed to be a philosophical pacifist. I believe that in theory there *can* be such a thing as a just war, and an unjust peace. There may have even been a few of those, though I have been growing more skeptical about some I was once very sure of.

Another thing to bear in mind is that I am generally pro-military, but not necessarily in favor of every war somebody might propose. And people like Hillary propose and promote wars for very different reasons and of different kinds than any I would get behind or even go along with.

Part of the explanation for this is that I view the military very differently than the Clintons. They (or at least the Once and Future First Husband, Bill) said openly that they loathe and despise the military -- meaning the people who actually serve in it, and its general "culture" or outlook.

I see it as an instrument for fighting -- fighting wars that really need to be fought, chiefly in self-defense. I have no interest in "spreading democracy" or "nation building."

But they *are* into that, in a big way. Also, while they look down on the people who really do the fighting, they *lurve* the idea of using the military, NOT chiefly for fighting, but as a laboratory for various Progressive social engineering experiments, none of which have anything to do with its combat efficiency, and in fact work against that.

And they're not really pacifists or really anti-war when they see something to be gained -- for themselves and others like them -- by exploiting the lowly cannon fodder, who as far as they are concerned are there to be wasted anyway.

What value is the glory provided by a god for the surviving leaders or the dead "patriotic" fools who died. Do the dead have burial garments emblazoned with, " I died for Bush's or Clinton's or Barack's glory and, also, democracy?"

seems man is bi polar and schizophrenic
resulting in a hierarchy of repulsion and
attraction like magnetism, then there is gender.
the demands of gender, competition and extinction;
war and peace centrally orchestrated and ongoing.

Hillary has orchestrated the killing of orders of magnitude more "people of color" in Africa and the ME than the KKK managed to murder during its brutal and horrendous heyday. Anyone in the Democratic party with a shred of humanity left in their soul should be sprinting away from her as fast as possible. And yet...